Vice president for marketing and communications Dewi Widiyanti said on 14 August 2007 that Ericsson had decided to focus on IT education as it wanted to help develop the IT industry in Indonesia.
Ericsson first conducted such activities at the start of the decade, when it gave financial support to a number of electrical engineering students to enable them to finish their undergraduate studies.
In 2002, it launched the “Ericsson Fast-Forward” program, which enables some 20 fresh graduates from reputable universities to serve internships in the company every year.
This month, it will send three holders of bachelor’s degrees to the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) in Stockholm, Sweden, for two-year postgraduate courses in wireless systems in electrical engineering.
“We want to make a contribution to the development of the IT industry in Indonesia. When the three come back, we hope will apply their skills and knowledge to boost the development of IT here,” said president director Bengt Thornberg.
He said that Ericsson Indonesia currently had around 900 staff members, of whom 95 percent were the holders of degrees.
“We need more people with higher levels of education,” said Thornberg, adding that the three awardees of the bursaries would not be obliged to work in Ericsson after finishing their studies.
“We’ll welcome them back here, offering them jobs, but we won’t ask for a commitment,” he said.
Ericsson first arrived in Indonesia in 1907 and has been supplying the country’s telecommunications sector ever since. It provided Indonesia’s first cellular network in 1987 and GSM (global system for mobile communications) network in 1995. In 2006, it introduced 3G technology to Indonesia.
Ericsson recently extended its contract with the country’s top cellular operator, PT Indosat Tbk, to expand the latter’s WCDMA (wideband code division multiple access) and HSPA (high-speed packet access) network coverage in greater Jakarta.
The mobile company will hence be responsible for supplying core, radio access network and transmission equipment, covering the design, deployment, integration, performance and improvement of Indosat’s WCDMA/HSPA network.
